Volkswagen Clean Diesel
Krisanna N Hall
Southern New Hampshire University
OL-324: Managing Quality
Instructor Troy Burrows
April 18,2021
Volkswagen Clean Diesel
Volkswagen was founded in Wolfsburg, Germany in 1937 by the German Labour Front
with an objective to make an affordable "people's car". The design was originally crafted by
automobile engineer Ferdinand Porsche; however, World War II interrupted the mass production.
and the Volkswagen factory was used to produce military equipment, the factory was practically
demolished by the end of the war, it was eventually rebuilt under "British supervision" and the
mass production formally began in 1946 (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2021)
By 1949 more than 50% of automobiles produced in Europe were Volkswagens, in the
same year, ownership and control of the company was granted to the state of Lower Saxony and
the West German government (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2021).
In mid-2015 Volkswagen was doing well and continued making a name for itself all
over the world, being one of the leading auto makers in the world, largest carmakers in
Europe and even surpassed Toyota of being the "World's largest car manufacturer by volume"
(The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2021). This all changed in 2015 when it was found that
Volkswagen was deceiving their customers with their pretentious "clean" diesel campaigns.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice of violation of the
Clean Air Act against Volkswagen in September of 2015, which would impact over half a million
diesel makes and models, along with several million makes and models from their sister brands,
Audi, and Porsche. Volkswagen was not initially forthcoming with information of their massive
deceit, after some months Volkswagen admitted that they were evading emission control systems
with "defeat devices" in potentially 11 billion vehicles worldwide (Bartlett et al., 2017)
Volkswagen Clean Diesel
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These devices were able to sense when the vehicle was participating in an emissions test
by several factors such as the steering wheel position, speed, and engine operation and would
place the automobile into a "Safe" mode to engage the engine to run below normal operating
performance, thus tricking the emissions test into believing the cars were compliant (Hotten,
2015).
Prior to this scandal, one of Volkswagens biggest marketing strategies was their "really
clean diesel" engines, they launched several ads ranging from 2008-2015 in promotion of these
engines (Pemberton, 2015).
The quality culture at Volkswagen in 2015 is different than the culture we see today, and
that is because quality culture was next to non-existent when the deceit began. In 2015
Volkswagen felt a major push to diversify into the diesel industry, and due to this massive push.
the company fell into unethical tactics to be first, best and competitive in the industry. For
Volkswagen to do this there was no sense of right or wrong, breaking the rules was standard for
the manufacturer to get these automobiles released to society, no matter the price of the
ecosystem or the trust they would eventually lose from their consumers